


you can tell by the song

by psocoptera



Category: Paper Girls (Comics)
Genre: 80s Music, 80s technology, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 16:37:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16178978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: If KJ minded Mac always having to fight everyone, probably a lot of things would be different.





	you can tell by the song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Squishy_TRex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squishy_TRex/gifts).



> This story references the titles of a bunch of songs from the late 80s. You don't need to be familiar with the songs or their lyrics for the story to make sense though, I just picked them for their titles! This was a lot of fun to write (and I love these kids). Thank you to my betas Carpenter and Irilyth for your nudges of the tuning knob. :) Content note for some canon-typical homophobia/internalized homophobia (but no slurs).

KJ looks over at Mac. She's poised with her hand above the button, ready to hit it, head cocked, listening for the sound to change.

KJ would probably be faster - she has better reflexes - but this isn't a matter of life-or-death, time travel, timeline repair, or anything crucial like that.

This is a mixtape, and it's _Mac's_ mixtape (even though it's being recorded on KJ's boombox, on one of KJ's blank tapes). Only Mac can decide if the next song up on Power 108 FM is worthy of being the next song on her tape.

"The Right Stuff" fades away - just as well, in KJ's opinion, she's never gotten the whole NKOTB thing. Maybe for obvious would-never-have-a-crush-on-any-of-them reasons? The new song opens with the unmistakable first notes of "Open Your Heart", though, and KJ's never been all that into Madonna either, who KJ _could_ see having a crush on, although, in fact, she doesn't. Maybe she's just picky.

Mac groans and flops back on the floor.

"Ugh," she says. "Didn't they just _play_ this? We _just_ heard this."

"I think that was before we changed the station," KJ says, making sure she's looking down at her history homework and not at Mac's midriff, where the bottom of her shirt has slid ever so slightly up away from the top of her pants.

"I just want something _good_ ," Mac complains to KJ's ceiling. "Stupid radio."

"I told you, you can copy from my tapes," KJ says. "The tape-to-tape sound quality is probably clearer than most of the stations." And dual cassette had been, like, the one feature she had told her parents her stereo had to have, although she doesn't really want to make a point of that to Mac, who has neither a pile of bat mitzvah cash or parents who can be wheedled into letting her spend some of it. Mac has a garage-sale Walkman that mostly doesn't eat tapes.

"It's not about _sound quality_ ," Mac says. She pauses. "Also, your tapes suck."

"I like what I like," KJ says, shrugging, but that's close enough to things they don't talk about that Mac doesn't answer.

"I'm going back to the Buzzard," she says instead, and sits back up to spin the dial down, a fast cascade of blips and bleats, and then a slower final adjustment. "Push It" coalesces out of the static. 

"Hey," Mac says, hand heading for _Record_ , but the song is already half-over, and Mac stops before she hits the button.

KJ has it on tape, but maybe she won't mention that just now, given that her tapes apparently suck.

When they had finally made it back to Hell Morning - when all of the folding and looping and back and forth and chasing and hiding and fighting were done, and they were all four back when they belonged, tired and scarred and overwhelmed with all the things they had seen - they had agreed on two things.

One, they were definitely not going to drift apart like some of their future selves had described. The Big Overwrite had changed all of those futures, maybe, possibly, or that was the theory, at least. So it was possible to believe things could be different.

Secondly, though, they don't talk about what happened. Not any of it, not any of the futures or the pasts, not even the parts that were amazing. It had just been too much to carry forward, like their bikes had been chained to a semi truck. Nobody could pull that, not even all four of them together, so they had left it behind on Hell Morning and pedaled away hard.

KJ sometimes looks back, though. Oh, she doesn't mind never discussing the blood on her hands - doesn't mind that at all - but somehow her sexuality has also become an unspeakable secret of Hell Morning, and that isn't fair. The pterodactyls and robots are gone from the sky, but KJ is still very much a lesbian, right here, spring of 1989; neither something she did once, or something that might happen someday, but something that just is, right now.

"Push It" fades into "She Drives Me Crazy", and Mac slams the Rec button.

"You don't have to punch it through the floor," KJ says mildly, and Mac flips her off, which is mild for Mac. KJ looks back down at her homework, but she can see from the corner of her eye that Mac is silently singing along, lip-synching the lyrics.

KJ's lip reading isn't good enough to tell whether Mac is changing the lyrics to "he", like just being a girl singing someone else's song about a girl would be over the line for her.

" _You_ drive me crazy," KJ mutters, too quietly for Mac to hear over the music, she thinks, but Mac whips her head around to glare at KJ, so, apparently not.

"Something to say, Kaje?" Mac snaps, and then catches herself, like she's just remembered that she doesn't _want_ KJ to say anything. "I'll, uh, I guess I'll look at your tapes now."

KJ waves towards them - they're in a shoebox on the floor by the boombox - and Mac scoots around to investigate them.

For a moment, KJ almost can't breathe, looking at the curve of Mac's neck where her hair has fallen to either side.

"What even is this stuff," Mac mutters. "Melissa Etheridge, 'Similar Features'? Who the hell is that?"

"I probably heard it on WRUW," KJ says vaguely, which is her prepared excuse for any number of things. College radio, who can predict it.

"Oh, hey," Mac says. "'Straight Up'. Now there's a song for you."

She's still bent over the boxes of tapes, and KJ can't see her face; she can't tell from Mac's voice whether she's issuing a warning, or reflexively sniping, or if it's the only way she knows how to bring it up at all. If KJ minded Mac always having to fight everyone probably a lot of things would be different.

"More like 'I Can't Face The Fact'," KJ answers.

"Um," Mac says, looking down at one of the tapes in her hand. "'Do You Believe In Shame'?"

"'Come Out Fighting'!" KJ says, fast, like knocking a ball back at her.

Mac digs through the tapes. "'Fading Away'," she says, more quietly.

"'You're Not Alone'," KJ says. Ugh, she doesn't even like Chicago. But trying to just stick to music she likes sounds like a fast way to lose this little game... honestly it feels like a minor miracle she can think of any song titles at all, without the advantage of a box of mixtapes.

Mac is still rummaging through the tapes. "'Last Beat of My Heart'?" she reads, and KJ can hear the difference, that she's not saying it _at_ KJ. "Is that goth?"

Nobody ever mentions anything about future Tiffany, obviously, but "goth" has become a little bit of an inside joke, not quite worthy of a nudge or a raised eyebrow, but always implying one. "Last Beat of My Heart" actually is goth - if Mac opened the cassette case and took out the tape, she'd be able to see the band name on the next line down of the folded liner, which in this case is Siouxsie and the Banshees. Pretty goth.

"Yeah," KJ says. "It's a good song."

Mac doesn't open the case, but she folds her hand around the tape like she wants to hold on to this one. KJ is about to suggest that Mac should put it in and play it - it's a pretty good mix - when she realizes the boombox is still diligently recording, and WMMS is now playing "Never Gonna Give You Up", a song that KJ won't miss at all when the radio stops playing it, and which Mac probably didn't mean to put on her mixtape.

"Whoops, your mix," KJ says, and Mac hits _Stop_.

"I can just go back and record over it," Mac says, looking up from the floor up to where KJ's been sitting on her bed this whole time, and it's less combative than 95% of her looks; it makes her words seem more serious, more significant.

Somewhere in time, KJ guesses there was a whole war about that, about do-overs and second chances, or there will be, or maybe there won't be, now that things have maybe changed. She's never really wanted a do-over, anyways, just a... a do-still.

"I don't want a take-back on telling you who I am," KJ says quietly. "If this is the big do-over, then maybe it happens just like this, today. I just say it out of nowhere."

"Because you want to kiss me," Mac says sourly.

KJ thinks about that for a moment. She can't say she _doesn't_ want to kiss Mac, but that also doesn't seem like the most important thing here.

"I'm not going to bail on you when we don't," KJ tells her. "I'm your friend, before anything." She pauses. "I mean, if that's what you were worried about when you said 'Fading Away'. Maybe you were telling me I should fade away."

She's suddenly worried that she's misunderstood, but Mac stands up from the floor and walks over to the head of the bed, where KJ is sitting against the wall. For a moment Mac just stares at her.

"Well?" Mac says. "Scoot over."

KJ is still confused, but she scoots over toward the corner, and Mac sits down on the bed next to her. Their arms are touching, all down the length of KJ's arm; she feels acutely aware of every inch.

"I had this dumb idea about my tape," Mac says. "That if I - I dunno, that if I put everything on it live from the radio, then it would be like a memory of the day and time I did it, like a little time capsule. Not the creepy kind," she adds quickly.

"That's not dumb," KJ says. "I like that."

Mac shrugs. "I dunno. Maybe I'd rather just have the songs I want so I can listen to them later than try to hold on to whatever."

KJ looks down. Mac still has one of her tapes clenched in her hand, the one with "Last Beat of My Heart". She elbows Mac gently. "Something good on that one?"

Mac turns her hand over and slowly uncurls it. KJ doesn't really need to see the track listing to know what's on it - she knows most of her tapes by heart - but she scans down the list quickly wondering what caught Mac's eye. "'I Wanna Have Some Fun'?"

"The next one," Mac growls.

It's "I Hate Myself for Loving You", and KJ can't even say it out loud, because suddenly her mouth feels dry and her chest feels tight. Maybe she's _really_ misunderstood everything.

They sit there, against the wall. KJ's heart is racing. Should she... try something? Try to hold Mac's hand? Is that what Mac wants?

"Ugh," Mac says, impatient. "Turn your head already so I can kiss you, nerd."

KJ turns her head before she's even really processed what Mac said, and gets Mac's lips on hers for a long, shocking, exhilarating minute.

"Oh," KJ says, breaking away. She feels like maybe she just needs to stop and, like, blink for a minute or two. "Okay. Wow. Cool." She can feel herself smiling. Mac, weirdly, is also smiling, a very un-Mac-like expression.

"If you make me a mixtape, it better not suck," Mac says.

KJ still feels kind of tingly, from her lips to the crown of her head to... everywhere.

"Of course not," she agrees. The radio is still playing something but KJ isn't even sure what; sitting there with Mac sitting next to her, head almost on her shoulder, everything sounds good.


End file.
